The Steelworkers’ drive for decent wages, working conditions and back pay for 18,000 exploited workers in Los Angeles-area car washes — a drive that produced a federal ruling precisely a year ago — yielded a big victory in court on Aug. 13: The two owners of the most-notorious car wash were sentenced to a year in jail, four years’ probation, ordered to open their records to government probes and will pay tens of thousands of dollars for environmental and safety violations.

Months after Arizona politicians passed S.B. 1070, the controversial and now delayed immigration law, the right wingers are going on the attack against not just hispanic workers, but all workers.

 

Why is a signature OK to join the military and go to Afganistan but not good enough to have a union represent you?

Associated Press - August 9, 2010 6:04 AM ET

PHOENIX (AP) - Arizona lawmakers are scheduled to begin a special session Monday to fix an anti-union ballot measure ruled unconstitutional.

The legislation would ask voters at the Nov. 2 election whether to require a secret ballot for employees voting whether to organize as part of a labor union.

If approved by voters, the measure would have no immediate effect. Rather, it aims to undercut proposed federal legislation that would allow workers to decide whether to use a secret ballot or a public process when voting on forming a union.

The Arizona ballot measure is a priority for the business community, which argues that the federal legislation would allow union organizers to intimidate workers into joining.

Unions say workers should have a choice in how to form a union.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

WNYLaborToday.com Editor/Publisher Tom Campbell interviews National Labor Organizer Stewart Acuff during the annual Buffalo AFL-CIO Central Labor Council's Summer Picnic in Elma, New York.

Acuff, who's been involved in organizing for 35 years, once served as president of the Atlanta AFL-CIO Labor Council and now champions passage of the Employee Free Choice Act for the National AFL-CIO. Recently, Acuff and Labor Economist Dr. Richard Levins co-authored a book, entitled: Getting America Back To Work.

Acuff spoke to WNYLaborToday.com about his new book, as well as what Organized Labor and Union Members must do in the coming months to get the U.S. Economy back on track.

Labor unions argue that the recess appointments of Mr. Becker and Mark Pearce, a Buffalo-based lawyer, will merely restore some balance after the board favored business under President George W. Bush.

Overwhelming evidence suggests that nothing will work short of adopting a “single payer’’ system — under which all residents are covered by a public, comprehensive plan — or regulating the private health insurance system under a uniform set of rules and an effective budget that allows public control over the resources allocated to the health care industry.

U.S. business groups and Republican lawmakers are stepping up efforts to ward off a labor appointment by President Barack Obama that might trigger a surge in union organizing efforts.

Bill Aims to Protect S.C.'s Right-to-Work Status

The conventional wisdom is that owner/manager types like me are strongly anti-union – and I am.

But I strongly support the Employee Free Choice Act, known more briefly as EFCA.

Only 41-percent of Americans now view unions favorably, Pew poll says—a huge decline since recession began

But what, specifically, do they and the 17 million other U.S. workers who've unionized get that other workers don't get?

The “reinvention” of the “New GM” has begun with the opening of a lithium-ion battery plant in Brownstown, Michigan, near Detroit. The event was remarkable not only because the Brownstown plant signals GM’s return to the production of an electric vehicle but also because, for the first time in about 30 years, GM has opened a non-union plant in the U.S.

Sullivan said the biggest union organizing victory of 2009 was workers from several hospitals in the Boston-area Caritas Christi system joining the Service Employees International Union 1199.

The workers voted to join the union after the hospital agreed not to try to influence employees against the organizing effort.

Yesterday, less than a week after being sworn into office, Scott Brown turned his back on his campaign statements and on the principle of democratic rule.  Senator Scott Brown voted in lock step with the Republican leadership against allowing the United States Senate the ability to take a majority vote on President Obama’s nominee to the National Labor Relations Board

A little background: the NLRB was established in 1935 as part of the National Labor Relations Act. The Board was empowered to "make, amend, and rescind... rules and regulations" necessary to carry out the Act and its aim of protecting the right of employees to organize and bargain collectively.

What Continental did was legal, thanks to right-wing Republicans and to some “Blue Dog Democrats,” most of them from Southern right-to-work states. They’re always glad to keep government and unions “off the back” of big business.
    Big corporations and their friends in politics, the pulpit and the media call busting unions and shipping jobs and production abroad or to right-to-work states “free enterprise.” (The “free enterprisers” also blame “greedy unions” when they close unionized plants.)
    When conservatives say “free enterprise,” they mean union free. They also mean free of meaningful government regulations that do things like safeguard the lives and limbs of workers on the job, protect consumers against dangerous products and shield the environment against pollution that can make us sick or even kill us.

This is something that need to be watched. They are trying to outflank us.

Never mind that these are companies that seek to limit their employees rights by campaigning against EFCA. It is just PR spin

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 9, 2010

Press Contact: Tim Sullivan, Legislative & Communications Director, Massachusetts AFL-CIO / tsullivan@massaflcio.org / (617) 680-2344

Official Statement of Robert J. Haynes, Massachusetts AFL-CIO President, on Senator Brown's Refusal to Allow for a Vote on NLRB Nominee

"The Massachusetts AFL-CIO is deeply disappointed in Senator Brown's refusal to allow the president's nominee for the NLRB to be given an up or down vote. By using his first opportunity to vote to be against cloture on this issue Senator Brown chose to invoke his newfound role as 'the man who stops government' to prevent workers from getting a representative on the NLRB that would uphold basic rights to organize and collective bargaining.

By joining the obstructionist Republican mega-minority, Senator Brown's first vote kept in line with all national Republicans in saying nothing to the American people beyond the word 'No.' Workers deserve a fully functional NLRB and the president deserves his choice of nominee - just like President Bush got when he had barely any majority at all and stacked the NLRB with anti-union ideologues.

A vote against cloture for an NLRB nominee today was a vote against workers' collective bargaining rights, and collective bargaining is the vehicle which created the very middle class among which Senator Brown garnered so much support in his election. There is no question that NLRB nominee Craig Becker is qualified beyond any doubt and it is no secret that he is pro-union and pro-worker. To be against the nomination of a pro-union, pro-worker, well-qualified nominee speaks for itself and is the source of our deep disappointment.

In his first test of what kind of senator he would be, Senator Brown chose to be lockstep with Republicans in their mission to take care of the Chamber of Commerce, and chose not to be with workers at the first instance we needed him. We do appreciate Senator Kerry's vote to support workers in our quest for workplace dignity and worker rights."

What will life be like in an America with almost no private-sector unions or collective bargaining? We had a glimpse of that during George W. Bush's presidency, in which the unionization rate was already so low that median household incomes declined even as gross domestic product rose.

The new CBS “reality” show “Undercover Boss” that debuted last night after the Super Bowl is a 21st century sugar-coated fairy tale.

A boss explains how wonderful it is to work in his sweatshop, and tells us of the evils of the Employee Free Choice Act.

"The union presence varies across states, but unions substantially raise wages and benefits for workers in every state," said John Schmitt, the author of the report.

Laws are skewed against unions

Boston Globe -

By being sworn in today, a week earlier than planned, Senator-elect Scott Brown has put himself in a position to help fellow Republicans scuttle a hotly disputed Obama administration nomination to the National Labor Relations Board next week.

Washington Examiner -

A committee vote on Becker could happen Thursday, after which the full Senate can consider his nomination.

Brown aides won't say whether Brown would cast his first vote for or against Becker, but the looming vote on his nomination is one of the reasons Brown is anxious to quickly take his seat.

 

But, for trade unionists already disappointed with Obama, the collateral damage is far worse.

An interesting comparison of different philosophies that applies everywhere.